The first book-length study of any aspect of the reception of one of the most prominent and influential poems in European culture. It will appeal to students and scholars of Latin literature and classical reception, of political, religious and cultural history, and of early modern literature and art.

L. B. T. Houghton teaches Classics at Rugby School and is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Department of Greek and Latin at University College London. With Maria Wyke, he has edited Perceptions of Horace (Cambridge, 2009); with Gesine Manuwald, Neo-Latin Poetry in the British Isles (2012); and with Marco Sgarbi, Virgil and Renaissance Culture (2018).

Eclogue 4: text and translation; Part I. Prolegomena: 1. Introduction: noua progenies; 2. A new age: the Virgilian Renaissance; Part II. Politics: 3. Florentine fantasies: Maro and the Medici; 4. Maritime Maro: Virgil in Venice; 5. Princely propaganda: the Italian states; 6. Vatican vaticinations: the Papal Golden Age; Part III. Religion: 7. Poet and Christian? The Messianic Fourth Eclogue; 8. tua dicere facta: the Messianic epic; 9. A child is born: the Nativity eclogue; 10. teste Sibylla: Virgil in church; Epilogue: time regained.